A little over a decade ago, Midway – a company spiraling towards bankruptcy – dropped a trailer for what could have been, should have been its saving grace. This Is Vegas would be an open-world title set in Sin City where gaming’s most generic-ass looking mother fucker could do all the things fans of open-world games love to do: fight, gamble, race, and dance like nobody is watching. I think about the game whenever I am in Las Vegas which is where I am as of the time of publication.
I’m not big on gambling and I fucking hate cigarette smoke, but I love me some casinos. Maybe it’s my ADHD or my simple mind that is easily overcome with joy whenever I see bright, flashing lights and hear the buzzes and whirls of the slot machines, but there's something pleasing about making my way through the sea of hover rounds and cocktail girls as I wander a sea of penny slots. This Is Vegas would probably have been the most authentic recreation of the Vegas casino floor, but thanks to Midway going kaput and Warner Bros. killing the rumored $50 million project, we’ll never know. Instead, we have to settle for the other casinos video games have brought us, and as I thought of this week’s Destructoid Discusses question, I realized there are some pretty amazing takes on the setting in gaming.
From those old school Casino Kid and Vegas Stakes games that were just straight-up gambling simulators to Capital Cashino in 2017’s Yooka-Laylee, this medium has a long history with readying us for a life of lost wages. And in going through every example I could find, the one video game I keep going back to is Elite Beat Agents.
It’s a crime the West never got a sequel to this game. Only a few pieces of media have made me legitimately cry: the Doctor Who episode “The Girl Who Waited,” the end of A.I. because I’m a pussy, and the “You’re the Inspiration” sequence in Elite Beat Agents. But that’s a topic for another time. For this piece, I want to focus on the “Rock This Town” sequence. Set to the Stray Cats classic -- but covered by Mark Latham -- this stage features a Vegas magician facing off against the Fullhouse Bandits after they take over the casino. How rude!
What follows is an absurd three and a half minutes of cheerleaders rooting on the magician as he uses his tricks to confound the bandits and save the casino. He throws his cards like Gambit, uses his wand to transform their weapons into pathetic flowers, and unleashes a steady stream of doves right out of his cape. What I love about it compared to other games that include the casino aesthetic is it doesn’t resign itself to focusing on the most obvious aspects of the setting. There are tons of games that have casino features with slot machines, but how many focus on those bad magician shows? It’s a different side of Vegas, one that’s ridiculous, hilarious, and more family-friendly than seeing people with obvious addictions losing their life savings before tricking themselves out on the streets to make ends meet.
Like I said above, it’s a crime we never got a sequel to Elite Beat Agents because I’d love to see a follow-up where the magician is a highflying act in Vegas, performing some David Copperfield nonsense as the cheerleaders hypnotize the audience into thinking he’s actually flying.
via destructoid https://www.destructoid.com/which-video-game-casino-would-you-most-like-to-roll-the-dice-in--498957.phtml